2023, Vol. 10, Issue 3, Part E

Background: Dance involves body, emotion and mind: it is both a physical activity and a means of expression and communication. Bharatanatyam is distinguished by its grace and style, it includes traditional poses, rhythmic foot stamping, jumps, pirouettes, and positions where the knees are in contact with the floor. The most common site of pain in both genders across different dance forms and levels of training was the back (42.5%), followed by the knee (28.3%) and ankle (18.63%). The basic posture of Bharatanatyam is called ‘Araimandi’ which involves the dancer to assume a position of half-squat with hips externally rotated and knees flexed. It has been concluded in a previous study that the lumbar lordosis angle and the pelvic inclination angle in bharatnatyam dancers is more than the non-dancers. The theoretical findings show that deviations in the lumbar lordosis are contributing factor to low back pain. Back pain in bharatnatyam dancers has been associated with the increased lumbar lordosis and anterior tilting of pelvis. The resulting hyperlordosis elongates the abdominal muscles, making them prone to weakness, whereas the erector spinae and hip flexor muscles remain shortened. The aim of this study was to compare effect of core muscle stabilisation exercises vs core muscle stabilisation exercises along with stretching of back extensor on pain and lumbar spine range of motion in bharatanatyam dancers with mechanical low back pain within 6 weeks.

Subjects: This study included 64 bharatnatyam dancers with mechanical low back pain selected using inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Methods: The written consent of all the participants and Ethical clearance from the institutional committee was taken. Sampling of population was done by Simple Random Sampling. Subjects in group A (N = 32) received core muscle stabilisation exercises and subjects in group B (N = 32) received Core muscle stabilisation exercises along with stretching of back extensor exercises for duration of 6weeks for 4times per week. Pre and Post assessment was done by using NPRS for pain, Modified Modified Schober’s test for lumbar spine range of motion. Further data was analysed by using the appropriate statistical analysis and a result was obtained.

Results: After 6 weeks of core muscle stabilisation exercises and core muscle stabilisation along with stretching of back extensor exercises, post values of Pain, lumbar spine range of motion showed extremely significant improvement with p-value of 0.0001.

Conclusion: The current study proves that there was significant improvement in pain and lumbar range of motion in core muscle stabilisation and core muscle stabilisation along with back extensor muscle stretching groups respectively. However core muscle stabilisation alonhg with back extensor stretching showed superior significance.